As acute readers of this blog may have discerned, I have been rather depressed by the results of the election. Whether I go into a terminal funk or recover my inner Tigger depends entirely on the outcome of the runoff elections for Senator in Georgia. But either way, the recognition forced upon me that I live in a country filled with Trump lovers has been enough to give me some bad nights. This morning, I read an extremely interesting opinion column in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank. Because you may not be able to read it unless you have signed up with them I will reproduce here the paragraphs containing the most fascinating statistical information that Milbank lays out. Here they are:
“White evangelicals are only 15 percent of the population,
but their share of the electorate was 28 percent, according
to Edison Research exit polling, and 23 percent, according to the Associated
Press version. Though exit polls are imprecise, it seems clear that
White evangelicals maintained the roughly 26 percent proportion of
the electorate they’ve occupied since 2008, even though their proportion of the
population has steadily shrunk from 21 percent in
2008.
This means White evangelicals turned out in mind-boggling
numbers. Because they maintained their roughly 80 percent support for
Republicans (76 percent and 81 percent in the two exit polls) of recent years,
it also means some 40 percent of Trump voters came from a group that is only 15
percent of America.”
It isn’t Christianity that is eating their brains. That is
clear from the performance of Black Americans, who are overwhelmingly Christian
and voted by 90% or more Democratic. No, Milbank argues persuasively, what
motivates White Evangelicals is the fear of a loss of white supremacy.
I cannot say that I am surprised. If my 16 years in an
Afro-American Studies Department taught me nothing else, it taught me the
centrality in American history and culture of the ideology of White Supremacy
and the panic evoked in whites by any perceived threat to that supremacy.
One obvious lesson of Milbank’s statistics is the overriding
importance in contemporary American politics of turnout. The White Evangelicals
are exercising their democratic right to turn out in overwhelming percentages.
Fortunately for the rest of us, they are, as Milbank indicates, a declining
fraction of the population. If I were a young man, I might take comfort in this
fact but since I don’t have the time to wait until these folks die out, the
only alternative is for the rest of us to juice up our turnout to Evangelical
levels. Then they can retreat to their Bob Jones Universities and take blood
oaths never to intermarry.
15 comments:
As the 1968 Kerner Commission Report concluded, : "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." It’s been 52 years, and although we elected our first Black President, things have not really gotten better.
Over my lifetime, I can state that I have had a total of two Black friends – one from college, another a lawyer. And this is not because I am a racist or have avoided interacting with African-Americans (you will have to take my word on that – I judge people as individuals, not based on their race, religion, gender, or chess playing ability) We just have not moved in the same circles. I have no Black neighbors, and that was not a consideration when we moved into the neighborhood, it is just a fact. I have asked other of my White friends whether they have Black friends, and they all replied, no, not really – and it is not because they are racists either. When my daughter was in high school, I asked her if there were any Black students in her class, and if so, did she ever eat lunch with them. She responded yes, there were, but they kept to themselves, ate lunch as a group, and did not appear open to interacting with the White students – and my daughter is not a racist. When she went to college (Case Western Reserve U. in Cleveland), I would ask her the same question, and got the same answer. This is not meant as a criticism, just an observation.
About a month ago I was shopping at the neighborhood department store and saw an African-American couple. The woman was wearing a sweat shirt that said, “Love heals.” We were in the parking lot near each other loading our groceries, and I approached the woman, who was standing near a man whom I assumed was her husband. We were all wearing face masks. As I drew closer, the man backed off and warned me not to get any closer I shouted, “I just wanted to say that, unfortunately, our President does not believe what your sweat shirt says.” They looked at me in astonishment, then nodded in agreement and laughed. As I walked away, I shouted, “We are all going to have to learn to trust one another.” But we have to get closer in order to learn to trust one another, and how we live is not conducive to this. Perhaps having an African-American female Vice President will help. But I thought that about President Obama – and things did not quite work out that way.
I am doubtful that getting to know one another better is the solution. After all, the slaves and the slave masters knew one another quite well. Indeed, they were even sexually intimate if you can call rape intimacy. I found the same thing true in South Africa where the Boers on their farms knew their African workers much better than any city dwelling English speakers knew Africans. Indeed, the Boer farmers even learned African languages so that they could give commands to their workers.
Why does it not surprise me, M.S., that you do a lot of shouting in parking lots. "As I drew closer, the man backed off and warned me not to get any closer, I shouted...". "As I walked away, I shouted...". Doubtless all your "briefs" are dismissed because of the constant honking and braying.
But, surely, it can’ hurt, and getting to know one another as equals, rather than under circumstances where one race wields economic or political authority over the other, can work to reduce each race viewing the other as The Other. Friendships among peoples of different races and religions – Blacks and Whites, Muslims and Jews, Asians and non-Asians - generates mutual respect and erodes distrust. I don’t know what other ways there would be for fighting white supremacy. What, then, is the soluton? And is not your experience as the Director of the Black Studies program at the University of Massachusetts such an example? You were not a racist before you held that position, but did’nt that experience and your contact with more African-Americans enhance your respect for black culture and an increased empathy for what Blacks have experienced in this country?
". . . [T]he only alternative is for the rest of us to juice up our turnout to Evangelical levels."
I believe this to be true, but for those of us who are not in a position to register new voters directly and encourage them to follow through on voting, we have to identify those organizations which successfully did just that. By now, we've all heard about Fair Fight in Georgia, which played an important role in Biden's win there.
Arizona is another state where ground-level, grassroots organizations made a crucial difference, especially in Latino and Native American communities. I've been keeping a list of such organizations because the next time there is a national election, I want my donations to go toward activists, not big, expensive ad-buys and consultants. Here are some sample organizations:
Mi Familia Vota. (Active in a number of states, especially the Southwest.)
Living United for Change in Arizona.
Voto Latino. (This is a national organization, not specific to Arizona.)
Northeast Arizona Native Democrats.
Of course, every state has its own complex dynamics at work. Nevada seems to be unique in that a coalition between the Latino community and the Culinary Workers Union has been successful in turning out Democratic voters for several elections now. The important thing is to figure out what worked where. We have to figure this out ourselves, because Democratic consultants and officials are blinded by their own vested institutional interests.
jeffrey g. kessen.
Another one of your low blows.
I shouted because given the apprehensive response of the husband, I could not get close enough to talk to him and his wife, and in addition, my face mask suppressed the volume of my voice. And where the hell did you get the idea that my briefs get “dismissed”? You are really an obnoxious snot. (Yes, an ad hominem comment, but a deserved one.)
Oh. please, don't get in such a snit. It's all in good obnoxious fun. A wee bit of counsel: You should have said---"You really are an obnoxious little snot". The diminutive, "little" would have added an extra rhetorical kick.
Not having met you (at least not to my knowledge), I have no idea whether you are diminutive or not. And your criticism did not exude the slightest trace of good-natured ribbing.
I wonder which states Milbanks cited the impact of the evangelical. There are some states that would've gone Trump without them. Like Utah or West Virginia. Or in which they are so pervasive it wouldn't matter. But Texas, North Carolina, Ohio?
Friday night on PBS, there was a program which, I believe, lends support to the proposition that getting to know another race’s or religion’s culture can act to reduce intercultural distrust and suspicion. The program was about the creation and production history of “Fiddler On The Roof,” which portrays the treatment of young Jewish girls whose marriages in the shtetls of Eastern Europe were traditionally arranged by a match-maker without the daughter’s consent, under the supervision of the parents, and the anti-Semitic pogroms in Czarist Russia. In the musical, three daughters rebel against their father’s authority to determine whom they will marry. One segment in the program showed the musical being performed in Japan in Japanese, to rave reviews and huge audiences, because Japanese parents and their children were able to identify with the same breakdown in Japanese traditions at the hands of their rebellious offspring. Another segment was about the performance of Fiddler in a predominantly African-American high school in New York, during the strife between the American Federation of Teachers and African-American families that resented the fact that the AFT’s membership in New York was predominantly Jewish. Most of the roles in the performance were to be performed by the African-American high school students, who expressed some trepidation whether they could portray Jews. Some in the Jewish community objected to the performance being done, because they were concerned that Black teenagers portraying Jews would degenerate into the use of Jewish stereotypes. That is not what happened. The performance, and repeat performances, went off without a hitch, with African-American parents in the audience expressing pride in their children’s performance and the opportunity to learn more about Jewish life, and the student actors expressing satisfaction in their ability to identify with the characters because of their own experience with racism. Although this was an example of exposing non-Jews to Jewish culture, there is no reason to believe that comparable portrayals of Black, Asian, Native American cultures to white audiences can not have a similar effect of breaking down cultural mistrust and suspicion.
I inadvertently left out Latino/Hispanic, but you get the drift.
Since it touches on some of the concerns raised here and in previous threads, Robert Scheer's interview with Dennis Kucinich--https://scheerpost.com/2020/11/13/dennis-kucinich-on-the-real-reason-the-blue-wave-never-materialized/ --might be of interest to some.
" As I drew closer, the man backed off and warned me not to get any closer..."
Reminds me of an encounter I had in Santa Monica a couple of decades ago. I was fiddling around the front yard and I noticed out of the corner of my eye a couple walking towards me. I did a double take and swiveled my head back towards them. The man - African American - got a defensive look on his face and stiffened up (his companion was a quite attractive blond white woman). The tone of the encounter changed immediately when I asked, "is that a Newfoundland?"
What I had reacted to wasn't them but the huge dog they were walking. I had seen photos but had no clue as to their actual size. It was a very impressive animal. We chatting briefly about the dog but the incident impressed me as to the gaff they must have encountered about their relationship.
"It isn’t Christianity that is eating their brains. That is clear from the performance of Black Americans, who are overwhelmingly Christian and voted by 90% or more Democratic. No, Milbank argues persuasively, what motivates White Evangelicals is the fear of a loss of white supremacy."
Shouldn't white evangelical votes be compared to black evangelical votes, not all black votes?
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